Nehru-Wangchuck Cul­tural Cen­tre (NWCC) cel­e­brated its fourth years of An­niver­sary

The roots of the warm and spe­cial re­la­tion­ship that In­dia and Bhutan en­joys lie in his­tory, ge­og­ra­phy and vi­sion­ary lead­ers of two coun­tries. The seeds of the suc­cess story of Indo-Bhutan relation were planted by His Majesty King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck and In­dia’s first Prime Min­is­ter Pan­dit Jawa­haral Nehru in 1958. Since the meet­ing of two great minds, the friend­ship be­tween In­dia and Bhutan be­came deep at of­fi­cial as well peo­ple’s level.

To fur­ther strengthen this re­la­tion­ship, NehruWangchuck Cul­tural Cen­tre (NWCC) was es­tab­lished on Septem­ber 21st 2010. The name NehruWangchuck en­com­passes Pan­dit Nehru, the revered name in Bhutan and Wangchuck, the much loved Wangchuck dy­nasty stands for Bhutan. NWCC cel­e­brated its fourth An­niver­sary on last Fri­day in the cap­i­tal.

The cen­tre also has big li­brary con­tain­ing books on dif­fer­ent sub­jects such as re­li­gion, lit­er­a­ture, cul­ture, fic­tion and for­eign af­fairs.

Till now, the cen­tre has 834 prac­ti­tion­ers of yoga, 809 mu­sic lover regis­tered with NWCC. Ad­di­tion­ally, there are 684 mem­bers of the li­brary who en­joy the ben­e­fit of bor­row­ing books from li­brary. The cen­tre also pro­vide plat­form to the up­com­ing artist, writ­ers, de­sign­ers and med­i­ta­tion groups of Bhutan.

Over the pe­riod of time, ac­tiv­i­ties of the cen­tre have in­creased to many folds. To ac­com­mo­date the vast in­ter­est of Bhutanese Artist, the cen­tre has ac­quired ad­di­tional space on rent ba­sis, part of which has been con­verted into per­ma­nent Art Gallery named Siddharth Art Gallery and it is pro­vided with free of cost to the Bhutanese artist.

The yoga classes were con­ducted on a daily ba­sis by a pro­fes­sion­ally qual­i­fied yoga teacher and 40 - 50 peo­ple at­tended the classes daily. The class starts from 7.00 am in the morn­ing and from 4.00 pm to 7.00 pm in the evening.

It also pro­vided two weeks train­ing of train­ers pro­gram on yoga and med­i­ta­tion for the staff and pris­on­ers brought out from dif­fer­ent dis­tricts by Royal Bhutan Po­lice. Cur­rently, a month long spe­cial pro­gram for 15 prison guards un­der Royal Bhutan Po­lice is un­der­way.

The cen­tre also pro­vide mu­si­cal and dance on reg­u­lar ba­sis. Daily mu­sic classes in vo­cal, in­stru­men­tal (har­mo­nium, ta­ble, sitar), kathak dance are con­ducted ev­ery day by pro­fes­sional mu­sic teacher. And more­over, the cen­tre also con­ducts lec­ture-cum-demon­stra­tion by em­i­nent artists from both the coun­tries in clas­si­cal/folk forms of dances is also.

The cen­tre also con- ducts art exhibitions, sem­i­nar, talks and work­shop, and also it pro­vides the visi6t of the artist, artists camps and par­tic­i­pa­tion tra­di­tional art pro­mo­tion ac­tiv­i­ties.

Mean­while, dur­ing the an­niver­sary the yoga demon­stra­tion and the cul­tural pro­gram were pre­sented by the stu­dents of the NWCC.

Be­sides, an ex­hi­bi­tion of paint­ings “Puducherry Blue” was in­au­gu­rated by Her Royal High­ness Princess; Ashi Chimi Yang­zom Wangchuck to mark the event which was the out­come of the artists from all the SAARC mem­ber coun­tries who joined the Artists’ camp at Puducherry (In­dia) or­ga­nized un­der the aus­pices of the In­dian Coun­cil for Cul­tural Re­la­tions (ICCR) in March, 2010.